Selection Committee Profile: Loic LeMeur

Each Month, our Selection Committee Profile series will feature one of the amazing people who help us choose the next generation of Technology Pioneers. We couldn't do what we do without them.

ABOUT:

We're kicking off our series with entrepreneur Loic Lemeur. Loic is a serial entrepreneur who has been founding companies since 1996. He has founded an interactive agency caled B2L, a french web-hosting company called  RapidSite France and an application service provider called Tekora. In 2007 he founded his latest company, Seesmic. Seesmic is a social media client company that has received over $16 million in funding.

In addition to bulding businesses, Loic is a prolific blogger who has one of the most popular blogs in France. He is also the organizer LeWeb a conference held in Paris every year that focuses on blogging and New Media. Last year, over 2,600 people attended LeWeb from 60 different countries.

 BONUS FACT: Loic was instrumental in helping establish the Forum's blog!

Q: What is your company doing currently to support innovation?

My company Seesmic and my conference LeWeb are all about innovation. Social networking is  changing the way we think and collaborate. It's all about streams of information and we deal with them.

Thinking aloud in public or private with your friends allows you do get new ideas and do incredible new things, such as getting feedback on your products in real time from a community of users around the world.

Seesmic is the #4 social app worldwide on Android as I am writing this, which is the other huge trend, we want to "be social" mobile whenever we don't sleep, our smartphones are becoming an extension of our brains. I really enjoy innovating in those two trends, social and mobile.

 

2) Why is supporting the Technology Pioneers important to you?

Companies such as Facebook, Groupon or Twitter did not exist 10 years ago. Google is barely 10  years old and yet they are changing the World. The Technology Pioneers program is all about identifying and helping the next Facebook. It provides huge exposure and an amazing network that the startups can then use to build international successes. The Technology Pioneers program is unique for that. 

3) What are some of the major trends you're seeing within your industry?

The "consumerization of enterprise" is a very important trend. It's the Facebook generation taking their jobs in large companies and they will never want to use the same old technology older employees use, they want the same experience as for their personal life. Enterprise software has generally a much worse experience than using consumer apps.

Mobile apps barely exists in enterprise while the frontier between personal and professional life tends to completely disappear. Look at what a company like Salesforce is doing with their "Facebook of Enterprise" "Chatter" product. It is remarkable and we added support for it in all our applications. It is very exciting to see the enterprise world starting to change as fast as the consumer world changed.

 

4) What are the most important "wicked problems" that we should be tackling today?

Don't spend too much time trying to find a revolutionary idea and designing business plans. Find a niche and get started as soon as possible, ship a product, even if it isn't very good at the beginning. As long as it innovates, a small community of users will form around it. Then it's all about listening to your first users and customers and iterate as fast as possible. The good news today with Twitter and Facebook is that you don't need any focus groups anymore, you can just listen to the word of mouth.